A hometown is a nose bleed (or construction-site cement coursing through your parents’ veins) a warm current that even time cannot resolve Picking up a piece of the past is like picking up a fragment of bone, unearthing night’s dark flesh A hometown isn’t fertile soil (but it is a ferry) a poor and humble […]
Han Lei
MOONLIGHT 月光 by Xiao Qiao (translated by Cindy M. Carter)
The moonlight at my door is white. It flashes by like weaponry. A shattered scenery resolves into sweet and sharpened drops of candy. Bit by bit, they prick the slightly-slanted corners of your eyes. 我门前的月光很白 像某种兵器一闪而过 破碎的景象慢慢坚实 变成甜蜜的有点尖锐的球形糖果 一颗一颗 刺穿你微微倾斜的眼角 Return to table of contents for Issue 2 Winter 2010
CACTUS (THE IMMORTAL PALM) 仙人掌 by Xiao Qiao (translated by Cindy M. Carter)
The Chinese word for cactus, 仙人掌, translates as “Palm of the Immortals.” The cactus grows not from immortal arms, but vainly from the sands, thirsting for a surgery: Oh cut me, cut me open, let me hear the water gush from me… Comes a western trader, peddling wigs as sleek as silver, whose merchant-eyes pierce […]
UNTITLED by Han Lei
Return to table of contents for PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE Return to table of contents for Issue 2 Winter 2010
REQUIEM by Cindy M. Carter
The first bullet makes a brand new hole in a history vermilion. Potholes, bullet holes, dark stains upon the paving stones. Months from now, all this will be replaced. Heads, arms, legs, trunks, tanks, guns, bitumen and bicycles. One long row of cycles crashes to the ground. It will be some time before the corpses […]
LIKE A TIGER by Maya Kóvskaya
The waiting is intolerable in the soupy Beijing heat of Liang Huiping’s sixth floor flat. She glares at the hourglass spinning endlessly on her computer. The screen glares back—a palimpsest of her warped reflection in the curved glass of the monitor, superimposed on her Instant Messenger. She clamps her legs together and squeezes, looking down at her black […]
PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE: Dialogical Space & Multiple Modernities in Asian Contemporary Art curated by Maya Kóvskaya
CARBON excerpts from Rana Dasgupta’s photography series LIU LI TUN photography by RongRong and inri THE WALKING THE CABBAGE PROJECT (2000-2010) photography and performance art by Han Bing COMMUNIST LATENTO installation and text-based work from Raqs Media Collective NATURALISATION exploring what it means to be British/Chinese, this series by Anthony Key uses food and other […]
